


The Quiet Spaces

by Restless_Sunday



Category: Siren (TV 2018)
Genre: Dreams, Emotional, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 03, mentions of polymarine, nudity but no explicit sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29376510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Restless_Sunday/pseuds/Restless_Sunday
Summary: As Helen's life starts to calm after the events of season 3, she starts dreaming of Sarge again. He doesn't offer warnings of war anymore but he's there when her world is quiet.
Relationships: Helen Hawkins/Frank Fisher, Helen Hawkins/Sarge
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	The Quiet Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> I was recently hit with a wave of missing Siren and its characters and got to thinking about all the potential in Helen/Sarge. This is my attempt at exploring how Helen would mourn him when she's not busy with stressful situations, and expanding the tone of their dynamic (intense, peaceful, and not super verbal) to a dream space. In this fic, Helen's store and apartment are still totally intact.

She starts dreaming of him again. 

Sarge offers no warnings this time, and his specter doesn't stiffen up her body with worry. The world is safe again, forever maybe, or just for now; things are always changing. No, he isn't there to beacon her to action, he is simply there, a form of beauty and security in the middle of the hazy backgrounds of dreams. 

The edges framing him are curved and shimmering as they move. They're in Helen’s room and in the caves simultaneously. The walls behind him are etchings of their old language and the floor beneath him is the square of space in front of her bed. Everything is a little blue, a little silver, like her mind only wants that moment right before night becomes too dark, before the sea is too deep. His shoulders are bare and scaled but his legs are in jeans. He's everything she's seen him be -man and more- and he's looking at her. His intense eyes observe her and bring a calming breeze to the dimensions of the dream. He then appears in the chair beside her bed and rests his webbed hands on his knees. Helen finds herself in front of him suddenly, without having made any sudden movements. She stretches out her hands and he does the same. They touch palm to palm. He leans forwards until their foreheads are touching too and they exhale breaths – which turn into columns of light piercing through the hues around them– together. 

She wakes up from it with his name in her throat and mouth, like salt from water that has accidentally been swallowed. And her limbs are outstretched, reaching for him. The light from the sun coming through her window pulls her fully into wakefulness. She shifts in her bed, preparing herself to rise and meet the demands of many piercing eyes but the apartment and the store downstairs are silent, lonely. They are gone, rebuilding their family, and she is here, left to carry on. With so many threats, there hadn’t been time to sit with the loss and her eyes fill with tears as she realizes that this is what she's left with. 

It starts happening a few times a week. The dreams leave her quiet throughout the day and when Ryn is around, she notices. She sniffs at Helen sometimes as if to search for a physical injury. When she doesn't find one, she doesn't address the matter either. Grief can be indescribable for all creatures. Plus, she has her hands full with her daughter and her mind on her search for Ben. 

She hears Ryn tell Hope that Ben and Maddie are love, whenever the child is tired of exploring her shop and wants stories about them. Sarge is love, Helen whispers into her tea as she watches them, into the shelves as she fixes Hope's messes. 

Sarge touches her more and more in the dreams. Palm to palm changes to his hands caressing her from shoulders to wrists. Forehead to forehead changes to her face pressed against the sacred space of the crook of his neck, and his cheek against her grey curls. One night he is tracing her lips with his fingers and she licks at the webbing, curious and free. Laughter fills the background of the dream, a deep rumble, but she can’t envision him laughing so the sound is his but not. He tilts his head to watch her do it again. 

“Helen,” he says, slow and heavy. It stops the laughter. A bubble of light hovers between them for an instance then disappears. 

Sarge grabs her hand and brings it up to his mouth. His moustache brushes her knuckles as he kisses them. He tentatively licks at the skin between fingers and laugher fills the background again, this time light and breathy. 

Weeks pass and Helen wonders if her nature means mourning double, in the way of the sea and the way of the land. Will she dive in to chase a fading tail and touch the spaces in her apartment that could have been shared, over and over again? Are her dreams human or a brief breach of the ancestral plane that only her kind could manage? When she dies, will she go where he is resting or elsewhere? She doesn’t call on Eliza, doesn’t feel quite ready for the answers. 

Helen starts going out for swims a few times a month. She hopes Sarge sees her -wherever his spirit is- and understands the gesture for what it is, a declaration that she still cares. She cares and aches, even though they had few moments and even fewer words between them. She feels silly at times, holding on to an almost. At this stage of her life, she should know better than to linger on the lonely path. But they had the truth of Mer blood pulsing in their veins every time their hands touched. And being in the water feels like being surrounded by their possibilities. Anything with anyone else won’t quite be like that. She doesn't dream on the nights that she swims, and she awakes rested. 

People start feeling comfortable using their cellphones again and travelling, so the store starts getting noisy again. Helen even finds herself having more conversations about the town’s history than ever before. After witnessing a mass collapse of people around the world, visitors are equal parts intrigued and frightened by what could be out there. She tries to educate without giving too much away. Levi appears with Hope on a busy day to explain that Ryn thinks she’s getting closer to finding Ben, is following a whisper from a mermaid in a different tribe. Helen’s dreams come less frequently after that.

One night Sarge is kneeling in front of her and she is completely bare. Her hands are in his short, dark hair, fingertips massaging his scalp. And his hands are inconsistently switching between webbed and not but are applying consistent pressure to her legs. He slowly works his way from her ankles to her hips, undoing tension in the muscles. He was steady on his legs when he had them, but he touches hers like they’ll teach him secrets of motion. Bubbles of light float to the top of the melded cave and bedroom as she exhales relaxed breaths. He presses his face against her calves too and follows the path his hands take. Her toes touch the scales at his hips as she hunches over to touch the fins at his back.

“Beautiful,” she says. The edges of the dream dimension seem to vibrate with his hum of appreciation. His hands tighten slightly around the back of her knees. 

“You. Are. Beautiful.” He works through every word. She feels every letter against her thigh. 

The space around them transforms and they are at the bottom of the tank Maddie and Ben had prepared for the tribe. Sarge’s jeans are gone and his legs have fused into his tail and there are rays of gentle light marked along Helen’s chest. They stay there, in their peaceful quiet. 

Helen awakens slowly, stares at the ceiling and ignores the sounds of talking on the street below. She inhales and exhales deeply and tells herself that Sarge will not be there throughout the day, but he will be with her. Then she wonders which part of her nature is promoting this self-soothing. 

Rapid knocks on her door stop her flow of thoughts and all the sounds start trickling in. She senses that it’s Ryn at the door and moves quickly out of bed, senses that she’s needed again. As she opens the door to see an unconscious Ben in Ryn’s arms, a worried Maddie behind her, and Robb holding duffel bags behind Maddie, Helen knows she won’t dream of Sarge for a while. She’ll find him again when there’s room for quiet.


End file.
